Background

I am investigating the aerodynamics and flight dynamics
of disc-wings such as Frisbees using on-board miniaturized
instrumentation.
In addition to filling gaps in our knowledge of rotating
disc-wing aerodynamics at high advance ratios and angles of
attack, this work is instructive in exploring sensor-vehicle
integration issues characteristic of small-scale vehicles, and
in flight trajectory reconstruction from limited sensor data.
Both of these areas are relevant to planetary entry/descent
probes (my day job - see
home page )

The hardware used to measure the flight dynamics
of the frisbee were adapted from those used to measure the swing
dynamics of small parachute-borne instrumentation packages
(see paper 'A Miniature Parachute-Probe Dynamics Test-bed'
by Dooley and Lorenz in Proc. Int. Workshop on Planetary Probe
Atmospheric Entry and Descent Trajectory Analysis and Science, Lisbon,
6-9 October 2003. ESA SP-544, pp. 267-274, 2004
pdf )